From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




[email protected] wrote:
> 
> In article <[email protected]>,
>   [email protected] wrote:
 
> >
> > The problem with Seligman's model, which is a worthy attempt to reduce
> > emotional disorder to a biologically tracticible phenomena, is
> > that he never comes to grips with the fact that almost all occasions
> > of human "learned helplessness" is in the pursuit of an adequate sense
> > of self-worth.  As such, he merely postpones answering the central
> > quation with which I begin, in that I would have to suppose that we
> > have learned helplessness in the course of trying to appease the
> > feelings we have acquired from learned helplessness.  IOW, it all
> > gets a little cirular.  IOW Seligman doesn't help us to undertand why so much
> > of this learned helpless appears to be in the purusit of such biologically
> > bizarre objectives as purpose, meaning, moral integrity, attention, etc.
> 
> I think he just 'takes it as read' that these things are wanted because
> he believed that people are happier and healthier with them. To justify
> being happier and healthier with them doesn't seem difficult to me within
> the context of a social animal where these are indicators of strengths
> that have status value as well as practical value for some of them. After
> all, the plumage of the peacock is a thorough waste and hindrance
> practically but I'm unaware of arguments that it's an evolutionary
> anomaly since it seems to serve a purpose within mating.
> 

No.  But you should be aware that there are all sorts of things in human nature
which ARE beyond the pale (self-incinerating Buddhist monks, Greenpeacers who ride
between the whales and pissed off whaler with his finger on the trigger of a ten
ton harpoon, kama kazis (now that's a real girl catcher)).  Or are you suggesting
that Dawkins and his ilk are making mountains out of mole hills, that human nature
is entirely compatible with our natualisitic expectations and they just haven't
done their homework?

> >
> > That, of course, would be entirely compatible with my own conclusion
> > that the emotioanl instability in homo sapiens is evidence that the
> > species is beginning to show signs of becoming TOO RATIONAL (too
> > valuatively objective) for its own good.
> 
> Can you explain how you get from the theory that rationality and self-
> worthlessness have the relationship you're suggesting to this predictive
> idea? I don't get how you've made that jump.
> 

The interspecies correlation between the presence of rationality and the presence
of morality and emotioanl instability (our turning out like Kirk instead of Spock),
and the simple hypotheis:

Observation: The species in which rationality is most developed is 
   also the one in which individuals have the greatest difficulty in 
   maintaining an adequate sense of self-worth, often going to 
   extraordinary lengths in doing so (e.g., Evel Knievel, celibate monks, 
   self-endangering Greenpeacers, etc.).

Hypothesis: Rationality is antagonistic to psychocentric stability (i.e., 
   maintaining an adequate sense of self-worth).

Synopsis: In much the manner reasoning allows for the subordination 
   of lower emotional concerns and values (pain, fear, anger, sex, etc.) 
   to more global concerns (concern for the self as a whole), so too, 
   these more global concerns and values can themselves become 
   reevaluated and subordinated to other more global, more objective 
   considerations. And if this is so, and assuming that emotional 
   disorder emanates from a deficiency in self-worth resulting from 
   precisely this sort of experiencially based reevaluation, then it can 
   reasonably be construed as a natural malfunction resulting from 
   one's rational faculties functioning a tad too well.

-- 

                  Phil Roberts, Jr.

       The Psychodynamics of Genetic Indeterminism:
Why We Turned Out Like Captain Kirk Instead of Mr. Spock
     http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/